La Scena Online - my/maSCENA

Browsing: La Scena Online

La Scena Online is the digital magazine of La Scene Musicale.Contents: News, Concert reviews, CD reviews, Interviews, Obituaries, etc; Editor: Wah Keung Chan; Assistant Editor: Andreanne Venne
ISSN: 1206-9973

Marine Theunissen (left) and Chor Leoni (right) (Credit: Marine Theunissen and Chor Leoni websites, respectively)

Highlights | Marine Theunissen New Chants Libres Director, Ever After Festival Cancelled, New Chor Leoni Season

By Zenith Wolfe on 12 August 2022 Arts Industry, Classical Music, Highlights

Welcome back to La Scena Musicale’s Highlights, a curated, weekly list of arts-related news stories from across the world! Music Industry OperaCanada | Chants Libres Names Marine Theunissen as its New Executive Director Marine Theunissen will be working as the new Executive Director of Chants Libres alongside Marie-Annick Béliveau. Stir | Chor Leoni announces 2022-23 season, live and online The Juno-nominated choir Chor Leoni will unveil 15 world premieres at both in-person and online live concerts over the 2022-2023 season. SF Classical Voice | Are Orchestras At The Breaking Point? Live concerts are returning with plenty of new compositions, but…

John Adams (image from the John Adams website)

Lebrecht Weekly | John Adams: Slonimsky’s Earbox (Alpha)

By Norman Lebrecht on 12 August 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

When did John Adams become John Adams? Around 1995, according to his own narrative, when he broke with repetitive minimalism and found a more variegated expression. The turning point was an orchestral work called Slonimsky’s Earbox, written soon after the contentious opera The Death of Klinghoffer and paying homage to one of the quirkiest characters ever seen in a concert hall. Nicolas Slonimsky was a Russian-Jewish polymath who made himself useful to Serge Koussevitsky and Leonard Bernstein by re-barring complex scores that they could not beat unaided. The Rite of Spring, on their recordings, is taken from Slonimsky’s score. Among…

Bayreuther Festspiele 2022's "Das Rheingold". From left to right: Elisabeth Teige as Freia, Attilio Glaser as Froh, Christa Mayer as Fricka (Credit: Enrico Nawrath)

Review | New Bayreuth Festival Ring Cycle — A Stew of Undercooked Ideas

By Gianmarco Segato on 11 August 2022 Concert Reviews, Opera

After a long, pandemic-induced delay, the Bayreuther Festspiele finally premiered its new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle on July 31, but not before a myriad of changes. Back in the before-times, the Cycle was to have been staged by German director Tatjana Gürbaca, who mounted an exciting Ring deconstruction that I saw at the Theater an der Wien in 2017. Its first installment entitled Hagen – a mashup of Rheingold and Gӧtterdämmerung – followed the titular character’s development from a traumatized youth to the brutal villain we love to hate in the final installment in Wagner’s tetralogy (put a pin…

Tania Miller (left) and Yannick Nézet-Séguin (right)

Highlights | Interim Conductor for Bramwell Tovey, Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Mount Royal, Broadways Diversifying

By Zenith Wolfe on 5 August 2022 Classical Music, Highlights

Welcome back to La Scena Musicale’s Highlights, a curated, weekly list of arts-related news stories from across the world! Music Industry Slipped Disc | Interim chief to replace Bramwell ToveyTania Miller has been chosen as the interim conductor for the Philharmonic Orchestra. CityNews | Hope fades fast for Ever After Music FestivalA music and camping festival in Kitchener, Ontario is at risk being cancelled after the Township of Oro-Medonte denied them a special event permit. Stir | Vines Art Festival focuses on land justice through the healing power of the artsThe eighth season of the Vines Art Festival will feature…

Lebrecht Weekly | John Cage: Four Walls (Fuga Libera)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 August 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

When John Cage came to Moscow in the summer of 1988 it was not so much a convergence of opposites as a validation of the prophecy of cultural deconstruction which the American iconoclast had long foretold. Cage made music by breaking it down, causing records to stick in a groove, telling performers to chance it, making silence instead of sound. The Soviet Union, in its final disintegration year, was the perfect place to preach his kooky doctrines. Cage met a young pianist, Alexei Lyubimov, who became an instant apostle. ‘We drank vodka and ate dandelions,’ Lyubimov recalls. He was transfixed…

Nicolas Ellis conducts the TSM Festival Orchestra (Credit: Lucky Tang)

Toronto Summer Music “Inspirations” Concert Features Sensitive Interpretation of Keiko Devaux’s “Arras”

By Eva Stone-Barney on 4 August 2022 Arts Industry, Canadian Music, Classical Music, Concert Reviews

On July 31, Toronto Summer Music (TSM) presented Canadian composer Keiko Devaux’s award-winning piece “Arras,” and Klaus Simon’s chamber ensemble arrangement of Mahler 4, two works whose highly contrasting styles demonstrated the TSM Festival Orchestra’s mastery of both sound worlds in equal measure. The festival’s concert, Inspirations, featured soprano Karina Gauvin and conductor Nicolas Ellis. Arras originally premiered as the winner of the inaugural Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music in 2020, and was performed by Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. The work was composed in response to the Azrieli Commission’s “Canadian music” prompt: it comes together as an amalgamation of Devaux’s sonic…

Chloé Robichaud (left) and Sophie Desmarais (right) first teamed up for "Sarah préfère la course", in 2013 (Credit: Ninon Pednault)

Highlights | Actress Sophie Desmarais Conducts OM, TSO Emails Hacked, New Ergonomic Curved Keyboard

By Zenith Wolfe on 29 July 2022 Classical Music, Highlights, Toronto

Welcome back to La Scena Musicale’s Highlights, a curated, weekly list of arts-related news stories from across the world! Music Industry Ludwig Van | Toronto Symphony Orchestra among international cultural institutions victimized by hackWordFly, a email software used by institutions like the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and the Canadian Opera Company (COC), was hacked in early July. Personal information like names, email address, TSO and COC account IDs, and survey responses were stolen – no credit card or financial data was accessed by the hacker. The data was removed from the hacker’s possession less than a week later. La Presse…

Banner image from the Matangi Quartet website

Lebrecht Weekly | Matangi: Outcast (PIAS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 29 July 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

I dithered for weeks over whether or not to review this release, for reasons that will soon become clear. In the course of my indecision I listened to it at least ten times, so much so that it became a signifier of the state of our world in the war-torn, climate-seared summer of 2022. It is now a candidate for record of the year. Matangi are a Dutch string quartet, enterprising in its choice of unheard and little-heard music. The album consists of works by Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov and Dmitri Shostakovich, none of whom can be considered obscure or,…

Karl Tremblay (left) and Cody Fry (right)

Highlights | Karl Tremblay Has Cancer, Land Back Advocacy at Bluesfest and Orchestral Music on TikTok

By Zenith Wolfe on 22 July 2022 Classical Music, Highlights

Welcome to La Scena Musicale’s first Highlights article, a curated, weekly list of arts-related news stories from across the world! Music Industry La Presse | Singer Karl Tremblay announces that he has cancer (This article is written in French.) Karl Tremblay, singer for Cowboys Fringants, announced on Facebook that he has had cancer since January 2020. Toronto Star | From travel woes to inflation, music festivals face the most unpredictable summer yet From artists cancelling performances because of COVID to a shortage of goods, festivals are facing many issues in summer 2022. But festival organizers have found solutions, namely hiring…

Kurt Weill

Lebrecht Weekly | Kurt Weill: 2nd Symphony, Violin Concerto (Somm)

By Norman Lebrecht on 22 July 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Banned in Berlin and exiled in March 1933, Kurt Weill stayed for a while in Paris where he wrote a symphonic work to a commission from the Singer sewing machine heiress, Princesse de Polignac. The symphony was taken up by his fellow-exile Bruno Walter and performed three times in the Netherlands, but apparently nowhere else. It was not published until 1966 and remains an esoteric item, seldom performed or recorded. The present release by Jan van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra is by some distance the best I have heard, elegantly phrased and chock full of show tunes from the…

Previous 1 … 60 61 62 63 64 … 172 Next

Current Issue

PDF HTML

Next Issue : September

Ad Deadline : Aug. 21, 2026

Past Issues, Subscriptions, Advertising